Caramels In Heaven

It’s been a year. A year since the devil devised a plan to tear our family apart. To make us question. To make us scream at God. At least I know I did. A year since you were taken from us and I’m sitting here hit with every possible emotion. I’m catching myself tearing up when I call on a student whose quiet just like you were. I find myself unable to speak when someone, not knowing I’m family, brings up the trial. I find myself reminiscing on the past and longing to enjoy the future with you.

You see, life has come and gone. New things are happening. I’m pregnant. We may be buying a house. All things I’d sit at the kids’ table with you and tell you about, proceeding to ask you all about what’s happening and you’d probably giggle, shrug, and go, “Well, I’m not pregnant.”

Yet, it won’t happen. Thanksgiving is going to come, Christmas with the best oyster stew that you won’t eat, and Easter with an Easter egg hunt that you’d do your best not the be competitive, but quietly throw shade at the other team. Making all of us, in the car, turn around and go, “Dang, girl!” not at all expecting that from the “quiet one”.

We were supposed to hang out. To finally get a drink together after a month of going back and forth. Yet, something came up for me and something came up for you. We both decided we’d wait until next week when both our lives calmed down. We both thought we’d get that drink date.

A drink date that would never happen.

Why? Because sin happened.

Sin. The one thing the devil uses to tear us apart. He wants nothing more than for us to walk away from God. For us to question. For us to doubt God’s, unfailing love. Sometimes he succeeds. Thankfully, I’ve had an incredible support system that didn’t allow me to fall away. That told me to go talk to someone. Told me to open the Bible and read it. Told me to ask questions.

Isn’t it wild how sin can, at least for a brief moment, make you question everything? Little did we know our life was about to go into a series of events I never would have imagined our lives to go through. I mean, that doesn’t happen in Nebraska. That doesn’t happen to us. That happens to other people. That happens on the coast. Not here, not us.

I’ll probably always have that question of why. Yet, I’m reminded that while the devil used it as a temporary separation from us on earth, you got an eternal reunion with our Lord. You’re hanging out with past family and rocking out with God. You have no idea what pain looks, feels, or even sounds like. You have no idea how not to be happy because that’s what you constantly are at all times now: happy.

Sure, I’ll probably never be able to listen to Good Ole Days by Macklemore without bawling, but you’ll never stop smiling now. So today, a somber day for us, I won’t allow the devil to make me dwell on the negative. Instead, I’ll be thinking about you, in Heaven, having a complete blast. Giggling that giggle and eating Werther’s caramels with Grandpa because there is no way, in Heaven, he has a limit on how many you can have.